Journal of economic refutations - a proposal

Economics is drowning in a flood of bad books and papers, many of them written with the sole objective of getting another publication, many hurriedly written, sloppily researched, culpably negligent or fraudulent. Inevitably, good, honest economists are influenced by some of these, with the result that they produce bad economics themselves. Some waste their entire career by basing it on bad economics they learnt at university. Many journals are reluctant to publish refutations for commercial reasons. Refereeing is necessarily an imperfect system. A Journal of Economic Refutations would have the main objective of identifying bad economics so that researchers and professionals could avoid it, and so the public would not suffer the harm it causes. It would identify people publishing bad economics, so publishing sloppy, culpably negligent or fraudulent economics would damage their careers, rather than helping it. A refutation is worth a hundred normal papers, sometimes thousands. Another objective is show readers how to refute – a key professional skill for real-world economics.